


i knew you in a past life

by IceEckos12



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Background characters - Freeform, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Suicidal Ideation, The Unknowing, Time Loop, a canonical character death is what triggers the time loop, canon-typical unhealthy coping mechanisms, from tim's perspective, im going to fix his and jon's friendship whether they like it or not, major spoilers up to 119, tim's not in a good headspace, time loop of the s3 finale, very minor spoilers up to 159
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceEckos12/pseuds/IceEckos12
Summary: Tim went into the House of Wax knowing that he probably wouldn't come out again. He had made his peace with this. At the very least, he would finally be able to rest.He didnotexpect to wake up again.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker
Comments: 66
Kudos: 560
Collections: Time Travel Fics That Water My Crops





	i knew you in a past life

**Author's Note:**

> the sequence of events went like this:
> 
> me: GROUNDHOG AU TMA  
> best friend: go forth and write  
> me: THE UNKNOWING  
> best friend: oh boy  
> me: FROM T I M 'S P E R S P E C T I V E 
> 
> and then i wrote for four hours without stopping like a madman
> 
> title is inspired by walk the moon's 'avalanche'. if anyone is curious, i had bad religion by bruno major on repeat as i was writing this.
> 
> PLEASE heed the tags, and lmk if i forgot anything

Tim didn’t always used to be so angry.

There was a time when he was happy, he thinks. _Content,_ even. When Tim’s life was all that much better because his little brother breathed in the world. It didn’t matter that Tim should have been jealous—he was painfully proud to be one half of a heartbeat.

 _(Are you lying to yourself?_ His once proud, broken heart screamed at him, bleeding with every beat. It was habit to question everything that had ever been good and kind in his life, like if he searched hard enough he could figure out where he had fucked up.)

Even after Danny died, though, Tim had at least had purpose, direction. Friends he could laugh with, friends who teased him and loved him, and who he loved in return. He could still bear to wear his tattered heart on his sleeve, like a badge, like a tattoo, like a person who could still bear to feel.

( _That,_ Tim thought, _is where it all went wrong._ Because he didn’t learn, did he? He didn’t learn that once you start bleeding, once you are so mortally wounded, you never stop hurting. The wound gets infected, crimson lines of blood poisoning spreading beneath the skin. You keep hurting, keep letting yourself be hurt, until you are in the grave.

Tim should have carved his tattered heart from his shoulder and buried it when he had the chance.)

He learned, though. Let it never be said that Tim Stoker was stupid. Worms buried him, ate him alive, and though the shriveled bodies were ripped from his skin, he still felt their saccharine agony. They ate away the infection, like maggots clearing away blackened, dead skin, and then kept on eating. They didn’t stop until they withered on his anger.

That’s all he was nowadays. He didn’t have friends to laugh with anymore, and he didn’t have friends who teased him and loved him. He was reduced to a core made red-hot with perpetual anger, a pulsar that spewed a little more of him every second. There was more interstellar material in his veins than blood.

The worms turned Jon small, turned him wary and paranoid, too desperate to think straight, and Tim _knew_ that there was a cocktail of emotions that he should be feeling—hurt, betrayal, helplessness, _you pulled away when I needed you most—_ but it’s lost, buried beneath the molten, comfortable flow of fury. 

Tim didn’t need to hurt. He just needed to bear his teeth and tear at the world around him until it bled as much as he had, until he stopped feeling as though he was about to tear out of his own skin.

Pulsars spin out. Tim was waiting for the day when he finally did the same.

(He just wished that Jon understood. He sincerely, deeply wanted Jon to reach his monstrous compulsion into Tim’s chest and drag out the cancerous truth. It wasn’t that he had a death wish—he just wanted to stop, he wanted the anger, the slow, inescapable march to the tune of transcendent beings who did not give a shit about them to _stop._

He had no idea how to talk to Jon anymore, though. Tim’s pulsar core reacted to Jon’s like a magnesium strip being set to light, and there was only fury, only anger, potent and incandescent.)

It was why Tim didn’t hesitate in squeezing the button, because _that_ was how he stopped it. That was how he let the pulsar spin out.

There was a ringing in Tim’s ears, and as he watched the world fall down around his head, he thought, _Daisy really came through for us. Glad she’s reliable, at least._

But then, the unexpected happened.

Tim woke up.

Tim blinked muzzily a few times, bewildered. He was pretty sure the whole _point_ of exploding the House of Wax, besides saving the world, was that he wouldn’t wake up again. He twitched his fingers, curled them into a fist—and it was satisfying, it was _real,_ in a way that was impossible in dreams.

He didn’t feel like he was buried beneath tons of desiccated building. In fact, it felt like he was lying in his bed.

Tim opened his eyes and sat up. He _was_ in his bed; in fact, he was in his bedroom, dressed in his pyjamas. The weak morning sun filtered through the blinds, spattering across his eyes, and he covered them quickly.

Tim was in his bed. Last Tim remembered, he’d just pressed the detonator to bring down the building on the freaks who’d stolen his brother from him and simultaneously saved the world. Had he died? Was this the afterlife?

Tim thought about it for a moment. He was warm, comfortable, and satisfied in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. Maybe this _was_ the afterlife. Maybe this was Tim’s reward for having put up with the Magnus Institute for the past several years. Tim couldn’t say that he was disappointed with this outcome.

He smiled, and snuggled back beneath the covers.

An hour later, Tim was awoken to the sound of his phone buzzing angrily on the side table.

 _Now why would there be annoying phones in the afterlife?_ Tim wondered, followed by, _Maybe it’s Danny._ It was that thought that had him scrambling across the sheets and pressing the phone to his ear.

“Danny?” he asked breathlessly.

“Tim, where the _hell_ are you?” Basira growled. “You were the one who was so eager to come with us, the least you could do is show up on time.”

“Basira?” Tim asked stupidly. _No, that’s not right. I’m dead, this is the afterlife, and that should be Danny’s voice on the other end._

“Stop messing around,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Just get over here.”

And then she hung up the phone.

Tim pulled his phone away from his face and stared at it. _Think it through._

That was Basira’s voice on the other end, not Danny. As far as Tim was aware, Basira was still alive. She’d been doing much better than he had in the House of Wax, after all. This implied that _Tim_ was still alive.

 _You were the one who was so eager to come with us._ The only thing that he’d been eager for recently that Basira would know about was disrupting the Unknowing. Furthermore, the only reason he’d wanted to be on time to work in recent memory was the Unknowing. Therefore: it was the morning of the Unknowing.

Oh, that was not _fair._ Tim got his damn closure, he brought the building down around the ears of the bastards who’d killed Danny.

Or no, hold on.

Tim worked at an institute that was controlled by an entity that literally dealt in the dissemination and accumulation of knowledge _._ Who was to say that it couldn’t send out dreams of the future? What if that had been a vision, trying to warn him of what was about to pass?

Well. It might not have gone great, but Tim couldn’t argue with the results.

* * *

Tim woke up.

Tim blinked muzzily a few times, bewildered. He was pretty sure the whole _point—_

Tim exploded from his bed, throwing his sheets to the floor and swearing soundly. _What the fuck was that?_ Tim had gotten the prophetic dream or whatever that showed that if he followed a certain series of events, he would get the outcome that he wanted. He had followed that series of events. _Why hadn’t he gotten the outcome?_

This was—unfair. This was _actually_ unfair. Tim stopped the ritual. Tim saved the world. _Tim didn't have to deal with the Magnus Institute any longer._

Maybe this was hell. Maybe Tim was being punished for all the times he'd made fun of Martin's poetry or something.

But no, wait. Hold on. _Hold on._ Maybe this was Jon's fault. When things went wrong, it was generally safe to blame things on Jon. The man attracted trouble like no one Tim had ever met.

Tim kept an eye on Jon all through the strategy meeting, keeping an eye out for any strange behavior. The man looked as tired as he ever did, though, eyes rimmed in dark bags, mouth set in a grim rictus. He certainly didn’t look like the person who was ruining Tim’s entire day.

They went to the House of Wax. Tim tackled Jon. Tim grabbed the detonator. Tim pressed the button on the detonator.

Tim woke up.

* * *

Tim sat through the strategy meeting, barely paying attention to what was being said. As soon as it was finished, he grabbed Jon's arm and hissed, "We need to talk."

“Tim?” Jon asked, his eyebrows creasing in bafflement.

“Just come on,” Tim growled, and started urging him in the direction of Jon’s office. Everyone else ignored it except for Martin, who pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. _Calm down,_ Tim thought. _It’s not like I’m going to hurt him._ Even though Jon _did_ have a very punchable face.

Jon allowed Tim to lead them into his office and even shut the door without asking any questions, although the latter gesture was met with a bit lip and a darting, nervous gaze. Tim peered out of the window to make sure that no one else was listening in, before turning and advancing on Jon.

“Alright,” Tim said. “Explain to me what the _hell_ is going on.”

“What?” Jon asked, the furrow of his eyebrows deepening. Tim recognized the expression: he was being presented with a puzzle that he was frantically trying to put together, but did not yet have all of the pieces.

Tim rolled his eyes and crowded closer. Jon took a stuttering step backward, his hands coming out as though he was thinking about shoving Tim away. He didn’t, though, and instead kept his arms pressed up against his chest. “This is the fourth time that I’ve gone through this day, and I have a feeling you’re the cause. So what did you do?”

“I—I don’t—” Jon’s face went through a dizzying, complicated array of emotions in a very short span of time, eventually settling on gobsmacked. “ _What?”_

Frustrated, Tim span on his heel, agitated in a way he didn’t know how to put into words. He had felt more settled when he thought this had all been a prophetic dream, but this was now the fourth time around, and he just _didn’t know._

It’d been a long, long time since he’d felt this helpless.

“I think that I’m in a time loop,” Tim admitted through gritted teeth.

Jon didn’t say anything for a moment, the silence settling between them like a thick layer of snow. It was calm but deceiving, the quiet before an avalanche tore up the ground.

"Like Groundhog's Day?" Jon ventured uncertainly, like he was waiting for the moment when Tim told the punchline of the joke.

Tim desperately wished that there was one. "Yes, like Groundhog's Day."

Jon hummed at that, and the silence fell again.

“Would it help if I asked?” Jon asked quietly.

Tim ran a hand through his hair. He hated Jon’s monstrosity. He hated the idea of words being pulled from him, of a compulsion filling his head. He also didn’t know how to begin putting any of this into words.

“Sure,” Tim said finally. “Ask me, then.”

Soft static filled the air, fine powder being kicked up by the tremors of the earth. “Tell me what happened.”

And so Tim told him. Tim told him about the first day, the Unknowing, Nikola, the circus, _Grimaldi._ About the people they’d found in the House of Wax, about the skin, about the meat and the blood underneath. About _everything._ And when he was finished they simply stood and stared at each other, feeling the magnitude of what they’d just shared.

“Okay,” Jon drew in a shaky breath, a hand coming up and tugging at a curl at the base of his neck. “So, um—hm. You—you died, then. And you don’t know what happened to the others?”

“Nope,” Tim said, popping the _p._

“Right,” he sounded firmer now that he had all the information, now that he could slot every little piece of the puzzle into one concrete picture. “I-I don’t _think_ that this was anything that I did? I wouldn’t even know _how_ to go about doing this sort of thing, but, um...are you sure—"

" _Very_ sure," Tim snapped.

"Right," Jon repeated, and then fell silent. It was a thoughtful silence this time, that meant Jon was turning over what he knew, examining it from all angles, deciding what to do. Tim folded his arms, leaned against the desk and waited for him to come up with some self-sacrificial but ultimately viable plan.

Slowly, as though speaking from a great distance, Jon said, "What if this is a chance to get it right?"

Tim frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well—" Jon waved a frustrated hand and began to pace, short agitated movements that conveyed a frenetic energy simmering beneath the surface. "You died, didn't you? And I'm not so sure that Daisy and Basira were safe, either. It doesn't sound like it. What if this is the chance to—to save everyone?"

Tim felt bitter anger roll through him, because of course Jon didn’t understand. Jon wasn’t strong enough. “You don’t get it, do you? This was the best scenario. Maybe it didn’t go as well as it could have, but it could have gone a lot worse as well. Are you willing to risk the entire planet to indulge your superiority complex?”

Jon had been doing a lot of backing down from Tim lately, a lot of backing away, hands raised in surrender, mouth pressed tight with exhaustion. There was no fight in him, no willingness to push back, nothing to prove to Tim that he hadn’t just curled into a useless ball and given up. But now—

Jon’s dark eyes shimmered a low, metallic green for a second, his face contorting into a scowl of pure anger. He strode forward and jabbed his finger at Tim’s nose as he said, _“Any_ universe where I lose one of you is not the best scenario for _me.”_

And then he walked from the room, head held high, back straight, his steps sharp and clipped. Tim thought he heard a second set of footsteps hurry to join him, and a soft voice saying, _“What was that all about?”_

Tim scrubbed his hand over his face and let out a low, shaky breath.

Jon kept them from going into the auditorium that time, but Nikola came to them, scooped the lot of them up, and deposited them into her crazy funhouse. Daisy thrashed, and Daisy struggled, and Nikola killed her in a fit of whimsical sadistic rage. Tim caught the look on Jon’s face just before he stopped being able to understand the world around him, and it was despondent, and it was despairing, and when Tim met his eyes, they were pleading.

Tim grabbed the detonator. Tim pressed the button.

Tim woke up.

* * *

After the fourth time, Tim decided to not tell Jon. He knew that it was probably a stupid thing to do, but he was still holding a grudge for the pleading way Jon had looked at him. Instead he did his best to keep the idiot employees of the Institute alive. Despite his best efforts, it turned out that they were really, really bad at surviving.

Even when he tried to switch up the plan, things still went wrong. The few times he’d suggested they switch Melanie for Basira, Melanie refused to let the people in the auditorium die, and had been killed. In the eighth loop, Daisy let Breekon and Hope get the best of her before she got the best of them. The eleventh loop, Basira wasn’t able to work her way out of the Stranger’s influence and got skinned before Tim could do anything. Fifteenth loop, Jon lost his composure over seeing one of the other Institute members injured and went screaming to his demise.

Tim found that it wasn’t even necessary if the detonator went off, actually. The first time it had happened he’d almost panicked, but then he’d died in a horribly painful way, and had woken seconds later, gasping for breath.

Maybe he was going about this all wrong.

“Elias,” Tim said during the eighteenth time, baring his teeth in a caricature of a smile. “Can we talk?”

“Of course, Tim,” Elias said, all oily smiles and false good cheer. “What is it you wish to speak about?”

“How do you feel about this plan?” he asked, trying for diplomacy.

“Excellent!” Elias’ smile widened into something horrible and smug, all teeth, like one of the monsters that nibbled bits of the Institute away, little by little. “You know, TIm, I’m really glad you value my council. Especially with the way you’ve been acting the past couple of weeks—”

 _Nope. No, this was not the right way._ “ThanksEliasgottagobye.”

Tim didn’t even try to fix the loop this time, just pressed the button and let oblivion take him. Anything to not exist in a universe where Elias said, _I’m glad you value my council._

* * *

The morning of the thirty-second loop, Tim got out of bed, and made the executive decision that he did not give a shit about the Unknowing, or Jon, or the whole world. He threw on his favorite jacket, put on his sunglasses, and walked out the front door.

“Hey,” Tim said to the woman at the counter of the restaurant he frequented, and smiled charmingly. They had met almost four years ago, and their friendship had evolved from strictly platonic to friends with benefits. “Good to see you.”

“Hiya, sweetie,” the woman said.

Five minutes later, Tim was kissing Barbara’s neck, one hand curled over the smooth curve of her hip. Her mouth tasted like cherry lipgloss, and she was beautiful and fun and not from the _damn archives._

Thirty minutes later, Tim was ambling from the restaurant, rubbing at a smear of lipstick on his cheek, smiling at the world at large. He felt calm, satisfied, pleased to not be wading knee-deep into an altercation that he couldn’t win.

Tim woke up.

The thirty-third loop, Tim put a six-pack of beer and a container of peanuts into the back of his car and started driving. He drove East out of London, watching as the urban sprawl turned into the suburban turned into rural houses teetering lazily over each other, peering out at this interloper.

He drove East until he reached a beach, and then he put his car into park and padded out onto the sand. He knew that he looked wildly out of place in his work shirt, but this wasn’t a proper beach anyway, more like a rocky shoal, so he valiantly ignored it. He laid on his back in the sand and stared up into the cloudless blue sky, and drank a beer.

The thirty-fourth loop, Tim went sightseeing in London. The thirty-fifth through fortieth, he tried his hand at urban exploring, just to see what the fuss had been all about. The forty-first loop, he found the closest amusement park and rode as many ride as he could before he woke up again. The forty-second loop he carefully memorized the numbers on the winning lottery ticket, and the forty-third he carefully scratched the numbers onto his ticket. He had to try again on his forty-fourth try, since he’d gotten one of the numbers wrong in the forty-third.

The forty-fifth loop, Tim went back to work.

* * *

Tim looked Elias in the eye and said, “I don’t think that anyone other than Daisy should go. This mission is too important to risk messing it up with a personal vendetta.”

It was so quiet in the strategy meeting that you could hear a pin drop. All eyes were locked onto him, ranging from bewildered (Jon) to darkly fascinated (Elias) to unimpressed (Daisy).

“Are you feeling alright, Tim?” Martin asked.

“Perfectly fine, Martin,” Tim responded levelly. He was sixty days into his worst nightmare. Of course he was fine. “I just don’t think that we should be risking the world to indulge the cathartic desire to see this through.”

“Haha,” Basira said flatly, already dismissing him. “Very funny. Now—”

Tim scowled. As he surmised earlier, these people actually had the worst self-preservation instincts. “I’m being serious. I don’t think that taking all of us is a good idea.”

 _“You_ were the one who wanted to come with us,” Jon said, not quite an accusation, not quite a statement. He was probing, searching for what Tim could actually be getting at.

Tim wanted to punch him in the face. “Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”

“We already have a plan!” Basira said, her shoulders tensing up. “We can’t go changing it, not this close to the ritual.”

Tim narrowed his eyes at her. He wanted to implant the truth directly into her head. He wanted to somehow make her understand that this was the sixtieth time he’d been through this day, and when they all went, they all died.

_Tim pressed the button. Tim woke up._

“Change it,” Tim said quietly, tiredly.

He was getting tired of seeing people die.

Basira stared at him, lips slightly parted, a small divot of confusion pressed into the spot between her eyes. For a moment, no one else existed, just him and Basira, just his exhaustion and her confusion, her trying to will herself to understand what had made him look like _this._

And then the moment passed. Basira blinked and let her hand fall from the table, her hackles lowering. Daisy and Jon looked to her, and Martin and Melanie looked to her, and Basira said, “Okay.”

“Jon should go, though,” Elias interjected quickly, smiling winningly as all attention fell on him. “Jon will be able to let you know when the charges should be set off. It’s imperative that you have his guidance.”

Daisy glanced at Jon. “As long as he doesn’t slow me down, fine.”

Jon darted a look between Elias, then Daisy, then over at Tim. Then he swallowed and bobbed his head. “Fine.”

Almost two hours later, Tim woke up.

* * *

The next loop, Tim did not go to work.

Instead he left his phone on his charger and walked into his kitchen. He took his drip coffee maker, the one he’d bought and then subsequently never used, from out of the drawer. He stood there for several seconds, barefoot on the cold kitchen tile, holding the ceramic cone in front of him like an offering, and realized that he did not have coffee.

Of course Tim didn’t have coffee. Tim had been getting coffee every day from the little cafe just down the street from the Institute for the past two years. He used to go with Sasha before work sometimes, their elbows bumping companionably as they meandered down the street together, holding their respective drinks. Martin even came one time, although he’d ordered tea like a heathen.

Tim set the pour-over on the counter.

He didn’t know whether or not Jon drank coffee. Jon looked like the kind of person who would’ve been made out of the stuff during his time as a student, but now pretended that the only thing he needed was a stiff upper lip and a consistent sleep schedule. Tim knew that the consistent sleep schedule at least was not true. Tim used to tease Jon about the fact that he almost never slept.

Danny had not drunk coffee.

Tim sank to his knees and pressed his forehead against the counter, breathing hard through his nose.

Tim was out of coffee. Tim needed to go get ground coffee so that he could make drip coffee. It made no sense, and it made perfect sense.

What was he doing wrong?

A tear slipped down Tim’s face, and then another. Every time one hit the tile it let out a quiet _drip, drip, drip._ He braced his hands against the counter and buried his face into his elbows, smearing salt water. He was adrift, bereft, a ship at sea blown far off course.

Tim let out a shaking, shuddering sigh. He put the ceramic pour over away and padded back into his room, and crawled back under the covers, and went back to sleep.

* * *

Tim cornered Jon again. It was less angry this time though, less pointed, all the fight drained out of him. The pulsar had spun out, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do without it. He leaned against Jon’s desk and felt tired all the way down to his marrow and said, “I’m stuck in a time loop.”

Jon furrowed his eyebrows, but didn’t make the immediate leap to Groundhog Day. Instead he remained silent and simply watched Tim, slow and careful.

“You should ask me about it,” Tim added.

“Are you okay?” Jon probed.

Tim hadn’t been okay since he’d pressed that detonator, since he’d found a corpse slumped over his boss’s desk, since he’d been burrowed into by worms, since he’d ran like a coward and left his brother behind. But he knew that wasn’t what Jon meant. “You should ask me about it,” he repeated.

Jon stared at him a moment longer, before nodding his head. Static rolled up from nowhere, from everywhere, filing the room with its suggestive white noise. “Tell me what happened.”

Tim didn’t resist. He laid the whole story out, starting with the first day, the day when Tim had been bitter and angry and bursting to get his hands around _someone’s_ throat, and ending with when only Daisy and Jon had gone to the House of Wax, and it had gone wrong anyway.

Jon rested his hands on the back of his chair, knuckles white, teeth buried in his lower lip. He was looking at Tim the same way he looked at Melanie, the same way he looked at Basira—

The same way he looked at TIm sometimes, though he’d never cared enough to try and parse out what it meant before. Soft and sad and guilty, so guilty, as though he could somehow justify putting all the world’s problems on his shoulders.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tim ordered tiredly.

“Sorry,” Jon let his hands fall from the chair and took a step back, crossing his hands over his stomach. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Tim—”

“I really don’t care,” Tim shook his head. “I just want you to help me fix it.”

Jon self-consciously pulled at the hair at the base of his neck, a nervous gesture that Tim recognized from lifetimes ago. That first day, Jon had tugged at his hair, and he had said—

“What if this is a chance to get it right?”

And this time, Tim thought about it. He didn’t dismiss the words out of hand, didn’t say _things could have gone worse_ and _this was probably all for the best._ Nothing that he had done had worked in the past. If saving everyone was what it took for this day to finally end, then Tim was willing to do it.

He was too tired to argue, anyway.

“Alright,” Tim said evenly. “So how do we do that?”

Jon shot Tim a shy, startled look. Tim ran over the past sixty two days, and decided that in any other circumstance, that surprise would have been warranted.

“Well,” Jon began slowly. “I suppose—Nikola notices us regardless of whether or not we walk into the auditorium, right?”

Tim nodded. “Right.”

Jon gnawed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “Do you think if it was _only_ Daisy who went, she wouldn’t get noticed?”

“It’s worth a try.”

Jon smiled a quiet, encouraging smile. “Then let’s try it.”

And they really did try. Jon quietly informed Daisy of the plan beforehand, and she took the information in with a slow nod and a shrug. Basira was less accepting, and it took a combination of all three of them to get her to go along with it.

Basira, Jon, and Tim all waited a good distance away from the House of Wax as Daisy headed inside, the explosives slung over her shoulder.

Tim woke up.

* * *

The sixty-fifth loop, Jon suggested that they all explode into the auditorium, weapons blazing, and try to take out Nikola and the others. The sixty-seventh loop, Jon created a detailed map of the auditorium from Tim’s description and used office supplies like chess pieces, describing how they would dodge the Unknowing. The seventy-third loop, Jon quietly asked if it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring the others into it, and Tim nodded listlessly, disinterested.

The seventy-seventh loop, something prompted Tim to say, "I still don't forgive you."

(Or to reiterate, more precisely. The first time he'd said those words, in the basement of the Wax Museum, felt like ages ago. He still meant them.)

Jon's head jerked up, eyes wide with surprise, something small and vulnerable hiding in the corners of his face. His mouth worked for a second, and he shifted from one foot to another, looking uncomfortable and off-kilter. For the first time it struck Tim how odd this all must be for Jon. It had been seventy-seven days for Tim; the progression of his mindset from one place to another made sense to him. For Jon, it had only been one day. _I'm probably lucky he didn't accuse me of being an agent of the Stranger,_ he thought, and had to bite down on a derisive snort.

"Okay," Jon said at length. The word was bitten off at the end though, the tone lilting strangely, as though he had more that he wanted to say. "Okay."

Tim watched him, watched the way Jon's expressions refused to settle. When they'd been in research together Tim had been mostly able to follow the jump in emotions, to parse the meaning that Jon was having trouble articulating. Standing in this room, years away from when they were last close enough to call each other friends, the old skill was ill-fitting, degraded by time and words better left unsaid.

He finally broke the silence, tired of the hesitation. "You can say it, you know."

Jon froze, his face slamming shut like an iron gate grinding closed. "I'm not sure if you want to hear it."

Tim wasn't sure if he wanted to hear it, either. He was pretty sure he wouldn't forgive Jon, but there was only so many times you could look into the face of someone that obviously contrite, that desperately remorseful, and not at least find out what they had to say.

So he just said, "I want to."

Jon took a deep breath and said, very quickly, as though he wanted to get everything out before Tim changed his mind, "I—I know that this may not mean much, but what I did after the worms, it, it was unacceptable, and I _know_ that I hurt you. I was—I thought that Gertrude's killer would get me next, and I was, I was, I _am_ scared, all the time. I stopped trusting the people around me _,_ I stopped trusting _you,_ even though you transferred to the Archives for me, and I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it. You were a better friend than I deserved, and I'm so sorry."

Then he shut his mouth, his shoulders deflating. His eyes were hunted, but there was a note of relief there as well.

 _I'm so sorry._ Words that he'd wanted to hear, just so that he could savor how it would feel to throw them back into Jon's face, for him to experience that betrayal, but—it was a hollow victory. Jon was the sort of person who punished himself over and over again, using even seemingly innocuous words as tools for self-flagellation. The thought of him turning Tim's anger into another ceaseless cycle of self-hatred—it made him feel ill for reasons he didn't quite know how to articulate.

So he said nothing in response, and Jon was wise enough not to push.

The eightieth loop, Tim looked at Jon, and something about his expression made Jon’s entire face crumple like wet paper.

“Tim,” Jon said, his voice laced with quiet desperation. “Can I hug you?”

Tim stared at Jon for a second.

_Can I hug you?_

If Jon had asked that two months ago, Tim would have said no, and he would have been viscerally smug at the resigned look that would have crossed Jon’s face. Two months ago, he would have sneered at the mere idea of accepting comfort from _Jonathan Sims,_ who had abandoned him, who he had been so furious, so angry at.

Two months ago, Jon had looked at him and said, _Tell me what happened._ Two months ago, Jon had taken the vitriol and the fury Tim had spat at him and then proceeded to try and help anyway. Three days ago, Jon had apologized with the air of an exhausted man reaching for a life raft.

Tim looked at Jon, and saw his own exhaustion, his own resignation, staring back at him. Suddenly, his own reaction to Jon's apology several days ago made all too much sense.

“Is this what it’s like for you?” he asked. He tried to elaborate, to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to say, _why do you hurt yourself on us over and over again?_ He wanted to say, _how do you not just curl up in a corner and hide your face from the world? Why don’t you just give up?_

Jon stared back at Tim helplessly, mouth opening and closing, tiny and unmoored and as lonely as a ship at sea.

Tim stood up and engulfed Jon in a hug, burying his face into Jon’s hair. Jon froze for one second, then another, and Tim could feel that he was holding his breath. Then a tentative hand came up and pressed itself into the fabric of Tim’s shirt, quiet and gentle, uncertain of its welcome. It curled there, and then the other hand rose to join it, gathering Tim closer. They clung to each other, breathing shakily, both trying not to cry, and both failing miserably.

* * *

The one hundredth time, Tim said, “What if we just...didn’t do anything?”

Jon looked up from his planning sheet and frowned at Tim. He was still a bit skittish, still looked at Tim as though he thought Tim was about to start shouting at any moment. Tim was trying not to take it personally. “Sorry?”

Tim nibbled on his lip, uncertain as to why he wanted to try this particular tactic. It was just—

They’d tried a lot. They’d tried one person going, they’d tried all of them going. They’d kidnapped an amused Elias and brought him along, just to see what would happen. They’d marched into the auditorium, guns blazing. They’d brought the others in, left the others out, and—

They had never tried just...letting the ritual happen. Letting the events run their course, seeing how the chips fell. They’d never just...not. Tim had no idea what would happen, but it was better to find out rather than wonder about it forever.

“I mean…” Jon leaned back, drumming his fingers against the table. “Tim, I don’t mean to—well. It’s just...what if that’s what they want you to do? What if by not stopping the ritual, you break the time loop, but end the world?”

Tim considered that for a moment, going back over the past three months, thinking hard. Eventually he shook his head.”I don’t think so, actually. There have been a couple of times where Daisy went by herself, and the building didn’t explode, which means that the ritual was probably still successful. I still woke up.”

Jon still didn’t look convinced, his nervous fidgeting increasing in intensity. “I—maybe. I don’t know if I want to risk—risk the whole fate of the world and all of you, I—”

“We won’t know until we try,” Tim told him calmly.

Jon went silent, and there went the weight of the whole world on his shoulders again, those choices that Elias had talked about. Atlas who had picked up the weight of the sky of his own volition.

“Next time,” Jon said finally. “If it doesn’t work this time, then...next time.”

* * *

The morning of the one hundred and first loop, Tim opened his eyes to the weak light of the sun pouring through his blinds, spattering across his face. He let out a low, quiet sigh, and rolled out of bed.

He dressed with a soldier’s precision, carefully smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt, tucking the hem into his trousers. He untied his shoes to put them on, and double-knotted the bow. On his way to the Institute, he stopped at the little cafe down the street, and could almost imagine the companionable bump of elbow against elbow.

After the strategy meeting, Tim touched Jon’s shoulder and said, “Listen, boss, we need to talk.” He nodded reassuringly at Martin’s suspicious glare, and was rewarded with pure astonishment. He shut the door behind them, leaned against the desk, and said, “Compel me to tell the truth.”

Jon’s eyebrows furrowed, a familiar dimple appearing between his eyebrows. His body-language was still wary, still weary, and it made Tim tired to look at. It made Tim tired to know that he was the cause.

“Tim—” Jon said.

“Jon, please.”

Jon fell silent, and again, that familiar expression crossed his face, the one that meant he’d been handed a puzzle but didn’t yet know how the pieces fit together. Tim watched him think, watched him struggle to find the cruel deception behind the innocent query, the right words to pass this perceived test.

Finally Jon said, voice wreathed in fine, snow-powder static, “Fine, Tim. Tell me the truth.”

Tim breathed a sigh. “I’m stuck in a time loop.”

By the end of his explanation, Jon looked tense, stunned. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then tugged at the curl at the back of his neck. There was something vulnerable about the gesture that Tim was only just coming to appreciate.

“Last time, you made me a promise,” Tim told him quietly. “You said that if it didn’t work last time, then we would try it _my_ way this time.”

Jon breathed out a low, shuddering breath, his brilliant mind stuttering back to life. “How many days has it been?”

“One hundred and one, give or take,” Tim smiled self-deprecatingly. “I might have lost count during the middle.”

Jon looked at Tim, eyes full of sorrow. He took a deep breath, then another, and tugged again at the hair at the base of his neck. “Tim, I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not your fault.” Tim injected every ounce of earnestness that he could into his words, like if he tried hard enough, Jon might actually believe him.

Jon nodded absentmindedly, hearing Tim’s words without believing them, and no. No, that would not do.

“Jon,” Tim said, reaching out and taking Jon’s wrist. HIs fingers wrapped easily around the fine bones, like he was holding a bird’s fragile wing. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. I want you to understand that.”

Jon froze mid-motion, staring at Tim with wide, confused eyes. Again, Tim had presented Jon with a puzzle, and again, Jon didn’t understand how all the pieces fit together. That was okay. If this worked, then they would have all the time in the world to talk, to understand.

Tim let go and stepped back. Jon rubbed at his wrist thoughtfully, a reflexive gesture more than anything else.

“Okay.” The words were soft, vulnerable. Trusting, and Tim was only just beginning to understand how horrible that was, the way Jon exposed his weakest points to them time and time again, let them take that trust and dash it to the side like it meant _nothing._ “Okay, Tim.”

* * *

The one hundred and first loop, Tim and Jon convinced Basira and Daisy to wait outside the House of Wax.

Tim did not wake up.

Instead, he walked away from the House of Wax, head held high, Jon a warm presence at his side.

**Author's Note:**

> and then they became good friends and foiled elias' plans and everyone was happy :')
> 
> To clarify: TIM IS STILL ALIVE


End file.
